Online pirates threaten to leak new Pirates of the Caribbean movie if Disney doesn’t pay up

In a move that would shock even a rapscallion such Jack Sparrow, a band of ransom hackers (no doubt emboldened by the recent worldwide proliferation of ransomware attacks) have threatened to release Disney’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in bits and pieces until they are paid of hefty sum, one they surprisingly demanded via Bitcoin rather than treasure chest.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed the hack during a meeting with employees on Monday. Disney is currently working with the FBI and refuses to pay, Deadline adds.

Deadline spoke to Hector Monsegur, a former computer hacker turned FBI informant, who said that identifying hackers and evading ransomware won’t be easy in the modern studio system.

“All these companies like Disney, Netflix and Discovery may have very good security teams but you have all these vendors and small production companies which don’t have great security and probably don’t have the budget to focus on their own security so hackers get in pretty easily,” Monsegur said. “Remember back in the day when movies would leak online and they would go to a pirate bay? Now there has been a shift with the advent of ransomware so (these companies) are getting demands to pay for their own IP. Any studio is going to have a problem moving forward protecting their IPs.”

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is slated for a May 26th release. Over the weekend, Disney officially leaked the first image of Sir Paul McCartney’s character.